This article was first published on LinkedIn as part of the Signals over Noise newsletter.

Last week, I ran a poll.

The question looked simple, but I think it gets to the heart of how we should be thinking about marketing today:

What drives new car sales more—influencer/media coverage, or feedback from current owners?

47 industry professionals voted. About 90% of them work for automotive OEMs in product planning, marketing, communication or strategy functions. 55% are based in Thailand, while most others are based in other Southeast Asian countries.

And the results?

  • 57%: Current Owner Feedback
  • 26%: Influencers/Media
  • 17%: “It depends”

As hinted at by John Jörn Stech in the comments section, the battle of influencers and media vs. current owners is in the purchase funnel. An influencer might bring a consumer to a brand, but the final decision often rests on real-world feedback. For me, that's the battle of Reach vs. Trust.

Influencers and media may have high reach but often come with low trust. An owner's feedback has the opposite profile: its reach is often small, but its trust can be incredibly high.

Having said that, in the digital age, that "low reach" can be a myth. Sometimes, a single owner's viral post can outgun an ad campaign, giving high-trust feedback exponential reach overnight.

Why Bet on Trust?

Edelman’s Trust Barometer showed that:

  • 79% of Gen Z say it’s more important than ever to trust the brands they buy and showing that each new generation places more importance on trust.
  • 67% of consumers are more likely to stay loyal to and advocate for a brand they trust.

For an expensive, high-stakes purchase like a car, trust has traditionally been a core driver of value.

But if trust is so vital, how do we explain the paradox we've all seen happening recently in Southeast Asia?

The Paradox of New Brands

Trust takes years, even decades, to build.

Yet in Southeast Asia, we’ve seen EV adoption explode from new brands with no track record at all. How can customers buy from brands they don’t yet trust?

They rely on a different kind of power.

Think of a rocket launch. You need a booster to provide the immense, explosive thrust required to break through market inertia and escape the gravitational pull of established competitors. That rocket booster can be one of two things:

  1. A Category-Defining Product: Think of the first iPhone. Few trusted Apple to succeed in the phone industry, but the product was so revolutionary it created its own demand, outweighing the company’s lack of history in the category. In automotive, EVs are redefining the product now.

  2. Disruptive Economics: When the price is dramatically lower—or when operating costs are slashed, as with EVs saving on fuel—the risk calculation flips. The deal becomes “too good to pass up,” bypassing the need for long-term trust.

But boosters only get you into orbit. To stay there, you need a reliable engine. In business, that engine is trust. Without it, even the most spectacular launch eventually runs out of fuel.

The Anatomy of Trust

How do you build that engine? The Trust Equation from The Trusted Advisor offers a good framework:

Trust = (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy) / Self-orientation
  • Credibility: Do you know what you're doing? Do I feel I can improve my life by buying your product?
  • Reliability: Do you follow through on your promises? If you say an 8-year battery warranty, do you mean it? If your dealer says March delivery, will my car actually show up?
  • Intimacy: Do you understand my concerns as a customer? Does your brand fit who I am?
  • Self-orientation: Are you looking out for me or just yourself? The less self-serving you are, the more I'll trust you.

Influencers and media can help you borrow credibility until more real-world information becomes available. A great review or serious ad spend makes people think you're legit, at least for a while. But they cannot build genuine reliability and intimacy, nor can they prove your brand isn't self-oriented.

Weapons of Mass Diligence

Welcome to the modern arena where trust is tested: the unmanaged, unfiltered, and deeply influential world of online owner communities.

These are the social media groups, forums, and owner-run YouTube channels where the Trust Equation becomes brutally real:

  • Credibility is a discussion about actual real-world electricity consumption across different driving conditions.
  • Reliability is a 100-comment thread where dozens of customers share screenshots of their delayed delivery dates, pushed back from March to July.
  • Intimacy is an owner praising a 3rd party shop by name that solved a problem the authorized dealer couldn't.
  • Self-orientation is a buyer's post about sales staff who claimed that the car price would definitely increase next month to close the deal, and then seeing the price drop further after buying the car.

For OEMs, the challenge is that you don't own these channels. You only hear about problems after they have taken place. You cannot control the narrative. But you must listen to it, learn from it and respond to it.

My Vote

If your goal is a short-term launch, you can use the rocket booster of price or product, amplified by the reach of media.

If your goal is long-term brand health, you must build trust. And that trust is forged and validated by your owners, in public, for all to see.

Time for me to cast my vote. Owner feedback wins. Influencers can start the story. But only owners can finish it.